Talking with a townhouse owner.

Okay, these photos at the bottom of this post are from a new townhome unit for sale that Gordon from RPASeattle showed me a couple of weeks ago, however the conversation below is with someone who owns a new townhome in Lake City and allowed me to tour her home. Here are some quick highlights of the discussion:

• She is a single person who chose to buy a townhome because it was a nice affordable alternative to condos and apartments. She specifically wanted to avoid noise that she found in both apartments and condos.
• She chose the neighborhood because it has good access to transit and because she used to live in Lake City, also, the neighborhood is showing some potential to become nicer.
• I asked her what she thought about townhome criticism from folks like me and she didn’t seem to really notice it. She also felt like she was now a part of the neighborhood and excited by future development.
• Parking was a bit of a concern for her, and I noticed that fitting her car in the garage was a pretty tight venture. She had installed an infrared system in the garage to make sure the car was perfectly parked before closing the garage door. And one concern she had about making sidewalk frontage improvements - that this would have a negative impact on the availability of on-street parking.

I’m not sure how representative she is of the typical townhome buyer, but for me it was good to put a face to a development. And if anyone else ever wants to take me on a tour of a local development (good or bad), just let me know.